The reasoning behind this move is said to be X/Twitter not being in line with Debian’s shared values
Personally, I think that the discussion around this will evolve as the news spreads, but I agree with Robert on this one. Sure, X/Twitter has become a less welcoming place than before, but shutting out a significant portion of your community without seeking their input first isn’t a sensible move for such a foundational open source project.
Nah, I think I’m cool if Debian doesn’t respect the input of Nazi sympathisers.
Yeah what the fuck is with that.
It’s a very twitter centric view of the web. If you’re not on xitter you’re “shutting out a significant portion”.
The thing is, it’s not simply that Musk has an ideology that is disparate from my own, he has an agenda that is egregiously contrary to the stated values of the Debian project.
You’d consult with the community over a new logo or blog layout maybe, but on whether to assist Musk in his far right agenda there’s not really any decision to be made honestly.
Yeah, that section is bad.
For one, it’s has classic vibe “if you want to keep the nazis out, you’re the one who’s exclusionary”.
But also, how is refusing to engage on a platform “shutting out a significant portion of [the] community”? That sounds backwards to me. Blocking people from engaging with Debian on its own platforms would be shutting them out. The implication in the article is that Debian is obligated to be unconditionally present on every social platform its users might be on.
The other twist is, unlike Xitter, you don’t have to create an account on Mastodon to be able to read their feed. You can access it like any other website. So nobody is getting shut out. They’re just posting elsewhere, where anyone can read it.
You don’t even have to go to the website. Every Mastodon feed can be accessed via RSS. You just have to add “.rss” to the end of the URL.
That’s a super neat trick actually. Why the heck has RSS been losing popularity when it seems to be the only magic protocol you really need to keep up with what you actually care about?
Oh I just answered my own question: It must be harder to hijack RSS with intrusive ads and clickbait…
Find the RSS viewer in Chrome or Firefox 😉
Ohhh I see what you did there. They’re all extensions. So 98% of users doesn’t even know it’s a possibility if it’s not default lol.
Blah.
Last time they seeked input they ignored it and shoved systemd anyway…
The “safety” thing is a bit hyperbolic. I wish they’d just say “the quality of the interactions is going down” or “poor moderation” or something else a little more honest.
Twitter is a shitty platform in structure, format, and moderation. I’m glad Debian’s not on it. But I am disappointed in them for using hyperbolic rhetoric.
Safe is a very broad term. Its not being used hyperbolically here. It’s not referring to physical safety.
Yeah I’m aware that it means “emotional safey” the way they’re using it. But they’re still being hyperbolic, because emotional safety in the context of opinions on the Internet is just not meaningful. In a relationship one can speak of emotional safety in context of emotional manipulation or violence, but on a microblogging platform? The axiom of Tyler the Creator still applies, and we’re not even talking about targeted harassment.
What is “The Axiom of Tyler the Creator”?
didn’t even knew they had an account there, good can’t see how twitter could ever be a good fit for Debian values or any person with who care about foss.
Maybe we’ll go back to forums.
I hope BBS’s make a comeback. Pixilated titles and all…
I’ve been working on writing my own forum in C# lately. Meant to look like some places I went on back in 2009-ish
I mean, have you seen YetAnotherForum.net? .Net Core, PostgreSQL/MySQL Support and the old VBulletin styling from the hayday of internet forums.
god, the replies to their tweet are awful…
It is depressing, but I try not to forget we are seeing a sort of survivorship bias of stupidity on the former Twitter at this point. The cohort of remaining posting accounts is dumber and dumber on average. And this dynamic is magnified in the replies, because they are paid blue accounts at the top. Eg, self-selected losers. (The top account has likely just hidden their checkmark)
There are still a few nitter instances alive
Ah, that captures such a stark answer to why people use xitter though.
It’s not “so I can hear from you” it’s “So YoU cAn HeAr FrOm Us!!!11oneone”
Walled gardens? More like prison yard. Lol
Why politicize everything?
Simps for X (formerly twitter)
Blue checkmarks…
This is to me one of the major reasons Twitter discourse is completely ruined and the platform is mostly useless for seeing what people think now.
When the only people who get to be at the top of discussions are people who pay for twitter, the only opinions that get shared are those that are pro Twitter, pro Elon, etc. Because they have a direct stake in the game.
And that’s if the accounts posting aren’t all bots that pay for a checkmark to boost engagement, which is almost all I see when I occasionally have to check Twitter these days.
So glad more people are leaving it. There’s nothing to gain from it anymore.
The replies illustrate the problem nicely.
Sounds like bots
Honestly I had the same thought. But on the other hand, internet outrage talking points have also become extremely formulaic…
Those replies are why they are leaving. And good riddance to such a godawful platform.
That first reply highlights a major difference in how people approach the world.
Speaking very generally, conservatism and right wing politics seen to attract those who see everything as a competition and that dominating other people is what it means to be a good person. Funny that it also leads to frustrated, angry, isolated people.
So if we want to switch to using a website that doesn’t promote hurting/killing 2% of the population, we are now BOWING DOWN to the minority some of us would not rather murder.
It’s the same reason they hate DEI so much.
L M A O
party rock is in the house tonight
Everybody just has a good time
How does one not feel safe on a digital platform? Even if someone physically threatens you, nothing is going to happen to you. And you can block/mute people you don’t care for.
Digital platforms have promoted genocide. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa16/5933/2022/en/ Blocking people you don’t care for would have no impact here.
Leaving the platform would have no impact either. You are talking about something different.
Yeay, Debian user here who also left Twitter/X for similar reasons. I was already on Mastodon and Bluesky but didn’t make a habit out of it. Leaving the bad platform entirely (and having my data archived and searchable) helped a lot.
Glad to hear they moved on!
They were still on Xitter?
i am keeping a record of what just what it took, before people got off.
This is a great example of where linking to a blog post about an announcement is better than linking to the announcement itself:
after digging a bit deeper, I discovered that there was originally a longer, more detailed announcement that was later scrapped. I found it in a GitLab commit made by Jean. [Link to GitLab comment in article]
Good job, itsfoss.com
If you ask me, this looks like a big possibility, as X/Twitter’s evident bias towards the newly established U.S. government and their favoring of one demographic over the other could have set off Debian’s move.
That’s just me speculating, though. 🙃
No, you got it right. I get that you need to cover your ass to avoid a lawsuit, but it’s exactly because a guy who loves the adoration of nazis owns the platform.
Good job Debian.
I don’t mind, actually everyone should ditch Twatter.
& all the US-based corporate social media… Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, & GitHub.
The VC-funded ones too like BlueSky
In any case, RSS should be enough.
“640k should be enough for anybody”
I still don’t think I understand the full utility of RSS. I guess it’s good for forum communication too?
Because my first thought was “RSS is cool but first we need human-written content and blogs to come back.”
RSS to know when there’s a new post on the blog.
all of the corporate social media tbh. federation is the way out of this cycle.
Nail on the head… it isn’t about one particular service or protocol but the philosophy of federation
I’ve managed to ditch every single one of those except LinkedIn. We simply CANNOT get new clients without it. The lockin to that platform is truly terrifying. LinkedIn is a crime against humanity.
Microsoft bought these social media platforms like LinkedIn & GitHub for this very reason. They want you stuck in their ecosystems …then train their proprietary AIs on your communications, then sell it back to you when you were the one that made it.
Question: how is LinkedIn useful to you?
For me it’s just a non-stop swarm of recruiters from India who want me to kindly listen to their offer of a job that pays less than I’d make picking up garbage, utter sociopaths dredging up some psychotic hustle culture nonsense, and previous people I’ve worked with/for asking for favors, which of course means free.
Is it somehow more useful for an actual business?
I think Bluesky can be an exception. I think it’s way better than Mastodon from a UX standpoint. And it’s still open.
And it’s still open.
It like chromium, control by for profit vc company.
No.
It costs literally hundreds of thousands of USD per month to run your own node. If it isn’t accessible to the masses, it isn’t revolutionary. De facto centralization due to prohibitively expensive costs is effectively centralization—same reason we should not trust a platform like Matrix.
Bluesky is just another startup grifting with open washing. It has all the same VC-funded trappings where the history of Twitter will literally just repeat itself—like we didn’t see what happened with it the first time around.
Mastodon can improve its UX but some of these platforms are rotten to the core. Or also use something on ActivityPub that does have a UX you like since they can all intercommunicate—or XMPP PubSub Social Feed since it has stricter governance to prevent it from getting too messy.
People just don’t learn.
